Technical Field
The invention relates to a method of coding and decoding, a coder and a decoder, and data signals using adaptive coding of the prediction error.
Description of the Related Art
Up to date standardized video coding methods are based on hybrid coding. Hybrid coding provides a coding step in the time domain and a coding step in the spatial domain. First, the temporal redundancy of video signals is reduced by using a block based motion compensated prediction between the image block to be coded and a reference block from an image that has already been transmitted determined by a motion vector. The remaining prediction error samples are arranged in blocks and are transformed into the frequency domain resulting in a block of coefficients. These coefficients are quantised and scanned according to a fixed and well-known zigzag scanning scheme, which starts with the coefficient representing the DC value. According to a typical representation, this coefficient is positioned among the low frequency coefficients in the top left corner of a block. The zigzag scanning produces a one-dimensional array of coefficients, which are entropy-coded by a subsequent coder. The coder is optimised for an array of coefficients with decreasing energy. Since the order of coefficients within a block is predetermined and fixed, the zigzag scanning produces an array of coefficients of decreasing energy, if the prediction error samples are correlated. The subsequent coding step may then be optimised for such a situation. For this purpose, the latest standard H.264/AVC proposes Context-Based Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding (CABAC) or Context-Adaptive Variable-Length Coding (CAVLC). However, the coding efficiency of the transform only is high, if the prediction error samples are correlated. For samples being only marginally correlated in the spatial domain, the transform is less efficient.